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Tuesday It's the night of the big primaries in Michigan and Arizona. The news networks are going nuts over Romney squeaking by in Michigan after he outspent Santorum five to one. I guess I am crazy (I know I am) but it seems to me as if the man who spent 20 cents to every Romney dollar and got within three percentage points of Romney is the star. However, that's not my point right now. I just finished watching C-SPAN. It was fascinating. A very smart GOP Freshman Senator from Wisconsin was grilling Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The Senator...

GREENVILLE, S.C. — Newt Gingrich was confronted by a black man outside Tommy's Country Ham House, who questioned him on his comments on having poor children work as janitors. The man said what Gingrich was asking for amounted to a "new form of slavery" and would force young African Americans to drop out of school.

Mitt Romney once again pitches himself as the presidential candidate best poised to effectively reform government, in a new ad set to run in Iowa. The 30-second spot, which features footage from a speech by the former Massachusetts governor, will run in the Hawkeye State ahead of the first-in-the-nation Jan. 3 caucuses. "I'm going to do something to government. I'm going to make it simpler and smaller and smarter, getting rid of programs, turning programs back to states, and finally making government itself more efficient," Romney says in the commercial, titled "Conservative Agenda."

Which is a long way of saying that the best thing that can happen to Newt right now is that the conservative media vet him and do so with great vigor, anticipating every charge and debating every past apostasy and failing. Newt's personal story, marriage to Callista and his conversion are powerful walls against his past poor judgments in his life, but they serve not as all to answer Steyn's charge that Newt "hops and skips like a giddy frog across lily pads across the pond, from one, little, itsy-bitsy novelty idea to another, not awfully well thought out." "And...

On issues such as Social Security, taxes and environmental regulation, the Newt Gingrich of the 1980s and 1990s is proving to be a problem for the 2012 presidential hopeful, who promises to fundamentally transform Washington. From appearing in a television ad advocating global-warming awareness with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to backing the 1986 amnesty for illegal immigrants to his early support for an individual mandate requiring Americans to purchase health insurance, Mr. Gingrich’s past is sprinkled with positions that cause some conservatives heartburn. Mr. Gingrich earlier this year waved off the Pelosi ad as “probably the single dumbest thing I’ve...

Mitt Romney, under fire from all sides on the strength of his political convictions, said Thursday he has been as consistent as a person can be during his political career. "I've been as consistent as human beings can be," the presidential candidate said in a meeting with the editorial board of New Hampshire's Seacoast Media Group. "I cannot state every single issue in exactly the same words every single time, and so there are some folks who, obviously, for various political and campaign purposes will try and find some change and try to draw great attention to something which looks...

WASHINGTON - For much of the past year, Mitt Romney seemed to strenuously avoid looking as if he were too closely linked to the Tea Party. No longer. In an apparent strategic shift, Romney will be standing beneath a Tea Party Express banner in New Hampshire on Sunday night, and by Monday afternoon he will be at a Republican gathering in South Carolina hosted by Senator Jim DeMint, the South Carolina Republican and Tea Party kingmaker. What changed?

The good news for Willard Mitt Romney is that his religion won’t knock him out of the Republican race for president next year. The bad news is, he’s got an even bigger problem now than the magic underwear jokes — Romneycare. “That’s the question he has to address,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H) was saying Friday afternoon. “Not just in New Hampshire, but nationwide.” You know how big a headache this is when even Mitt’s highest-profile supporters are dodging brickbats over the chaos that is Massachusetts health care.

Washington — Defying his reputation as a 1950s square, the new, more casual Mitt Romney is popping up around the country as he readies a second run for president. He's going tieless on network TV, strolling NASCAR pits in Daytona and sporting skinny Gap jeans bought for him by his wife. His latest campaign book, just out in paperback, opens with a regular-guy scene: wealthy Mitt in a Wal-Mart checkout line, buying gifts for his grandsons and comparing the surroundings to Target, another discount store he says he's familiar with.

Barack Obama shape-shifting to a  President who displays pride in his nation and also into a "softer, gentler" man is proceeding according to the plan I speculated about in Obama 2.0: the Reinvention Begins. My column suggested he would transform himself into being a warmer, more personable President and that he would heed the advice of Democratic analyst William Galston who counseled him to articulate American exceptionalism. How am I doing so far? Has the extreme makeover meant to fool us again started? Last night's State of the Union address was heavy on atmospherics -- particularly Barack Obama's notice that...

First let me say, I like Newt Gingrich, or at least, I've tried to like him as he's morphed into a political chameleon who talks out of both sides of his mouth. Gingrich is articulate and shrewd, but the author of To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine might want to go back and read himself, because lately he's sounding a lot like Richard Lugar. Initially, there was Gingrich's Hispanic "outreach" in which he warmed to amnesty on the Laura Ingraham Show and seemed taken aback by her argument against it. Laura knows the difference between "legal" and "illegal" and...

Barack Obama lets his faith show By: Carol E. Lee December 28, 2010 04:28 AM EST HONOLULU — President Obama’s trip to church Sunday followed a steady rebirth over the past three months in public expressions of his Christianity. Obama has publicly mentioned his “Christian faith” more times in the past three months than he has over the past year. He has more frequently cited passages of the Bible, including repeated references to the spirit of Genesis 4:9 — “I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper” — which was a mainstay of Obama’s 2010 campaign stump speech....

GREEN VALLEY, Ariz. — Times are strange for a recovering maverick. "You've been the first one who's run across the aisle," a woman seated in front of Sen. John McCain said accusingly. "Do you have a question?" he snapped. "Do you have a question, really?" "How can we believe you now if in the past you were so different?" The question could have come from any of the 150 people who filled a rec center in this retirement community 30 minutes south of Tucson. Even among loyalists, it looms. Who is the real John McCain? The 2008 Republican presidential nominee...

Somewhere, in his new life as a political hermit, Sen. John McCain must be grinding his teeth. Facing a primary challenge from the right in his campaign for reelection, McCain (R-Ariz.) has gone from spending nearly a decade as a hyper-exposed, perennial presidential candidate to being someone you can only find on Twitter. But with a tough decision to make any day now, McCain will reluctantly do what he has avoided for so long: make news. This will happen when McCain announces his vote for or against the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Either choice...

In another sign that he’s eying a second run for the presidency, Mitt Romney is planning a series of stops in Virginia next week to help Republican candidates running in the commonwealth’s off-year election. Virginia is one of a handful of states with competitive races this year, and one where Republican officials feel best about their prospects for victory. The former Massachusetts governor is the featured guest at the high-dollar gala next Friday prior to the Virginia GOP’s state convention in Richmond — one of the party’s chief fundraising events.

The conservative movement has a simple and almost certainly successful future if it does three things: 1. Advocate first principles with courage, clarity, persistence and cheerfulness. 2. Insist on developing solutions based on those principles and insist on measuring other proposals against those principles. 3. Be prepared to oppose Republicans when they are wrong and side with Democrats when they are right, but always make the decision to support or oppose a matter of first principles and the application of those principles.

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Back of the Book" tonight, let's bring in Governor Mitt Romney from San Diego, where he watched Obama's press conference. Did you learn anything? I'm asking this to everybody. Did you learn anything, Governor? MITT ROMNEY, FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOVERNOR: Well, I learned that there's a very great rhetorical benefit in being able to set up straw men, like the one you just showed, and then knock them down. Dealing with the real problems associated with Barack Obama's stimulus plan was not something which he was prepared to do, and you know, you understand why he's...

Whoa. My morning news perusal has brought me several stories discussing Obama's hair color, and the very important debate about whether he has a little Revlon secret. New York Magazine posted two images of Obama from Getty; the one on the left is from July 27th, and the one on the right is from yesterday. Their synopsis: "Barack Obama has begun talking about how he's 'going gray' lately, and it's true -- the man's hair is going silver faster than you can say 'Anderson Cooper with a tan.' So fast, in fact, that we have to wonder at the legitimacy...

WARNINGS ARE written like a billboard all over Mitt Romney. He has used his fortune to buy the most transparently shameless act of political plastic surgery I've ever seen. His blatant flip flops on a laundry list of key issues are pure calculation to win conservative votes. His loose regard for truth puts him in league with Bill and Hillary Clinton. To measure Mitt Romney's allegiance to our party, look no further than the words of top Massachusetts Republicans who have seen him in operation over four years. Former Massachusetts Gov. Paul Cellucci, former state treasurer Joe Malone, former state...

Reconsidering Huck Membership issues. By Mark Hemingway MEMORANDUM DATE: December 20, 2007 TO: Mike Huckabee FROM: The Conservative Movement RE: Membership Renewal Application Mike: It’s your old buddies in the conservative movement here. We know the Iowa caucuses are only two weeks away but we’ve got to talk. We know you’ve endured the slings and arrows of some establishment folks and to a certain extent the piling on hasn’t been terribly fair. Many of your critics — George Will comes to mind — seem far more comfortable with the idea of Rudy Giuliani as president despite the fact that he’s...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Democratic opponents call him a chameleon, changing colors as he seeks re-election in a difficult year for Republicans nationwide. Last week, the Republican Schwarzenegger was decidedly "green," like the color of his campaign bus, as he struck a deal with the state legislature's Democratic majority to enact a law making California the first U.S. state to cap greenhouse-gas emissions. In doing so, he snubbed his own party, much of the California business establishment and President Bush, whom Schwarzenegger has accused of doing too little to fight global warming. With that and other...

No. 3: Pay me now or pay me later. Anytime Angelides is branded a taxer, he should point to Schwarzenegger's running up of the state credit card. Angelides was a lone wolf in opposing Propositions 57 and 58, and can turn that into an effective foil by painting Schwarzenegger as the largest borrower in California history. No. 4: Microtarget the state's diverse ethnic communities. The Schwarzenegger administration has about as much diversity as an Alabama country club. African-American and Latino appointments to the judiciary and his inner circle can be counted on one hand. Angelides, who already has an advantage...

Kerry Fails Personality Tests 09/16/04 BOSTON, Massachusetts In a desperate attempt to connect to the American electorate, presidential candidate John Kerry recently underwent a battery of personality tests. The results of Senator Kerry's tests were startling: he is the first subject ever found to have absolutely no personality. In short, he failed. "We can't explain it," sighed Dr. Siegfried Royd of the Rhienhold Institute of Psychometric Testing (RIPT). "These tests were designed to place people into categories based on basic psychological and behavioral criteria, not to pass or fail them. "Take the well known inkblot test, for example. How the...

John Kerry: The Chameleon Senator By Ted Sampley U.S. Veteran Dispatch October-December 1996 Issue *SNIP* In 1991, the United States Senate created the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs to examine the possibility that U.S. POW/MIAs might still be held by the Vietnamese. As chairman of the Select Committee, Kerry proved himself to be a masterful chameleon portraying to the public at large what appeared to be an unbiased approach to resolving the POW/MIA issue. But, in reality, no one in the United States Senate pushed harder to bury the POW/MIA issue, the last obstacle preventing normalization of relations with...

Her driver's license indicates she's a man, but Linda Gail Carter insists she's a woman. On Tuesday, a judge ordered Carter to undergo genetic testing to determine her true sex as part of her lawsuit to dissolve her marriage to another woman. Following a request by Carter's wife, Constance D. Gonzales, state Family Court Judge Lisa Millard ordered the testing and placed a gag order in the case. In another twist, one of Carter's former employees claimed Carter has been using her former male name and dressing as a man. The employee claimed he and his wife were married in...

Despite the prayers and wishful thinking of POW/MIA families and Vietnam veteran activists, Sen. John Forbes Kerry, the "chameleon" senator from Massachusetts, was re-elected to the Senate in the 1996 election. Apparently Kerry's well publicized history as a longtime radical supporter of the Vietnamese communists and a recent flap about whether or not he is guilty of a war crime meant very little to the voters in Massachusetts. Sen. Kerry, the "noble statesman" and "highly decorated Vietnam vet" of today, is a far cry from Kerry, the radical, hippie-like leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) in the early...

The King Articles and Photos by Teagan Clive IronMan Magazine Wednesday, Aug 27, 2003 Campaigning for governor is just a little different from trying to win a bodybuilding title. In the political arena you’ve got to keep your clothes on (most of the time), flex your brain, define your positions and share your ideas with all kinds of people, many of whom might vehemently disagree. Knowing all this, Arnold has poured himself into a brand new mold. "He’s quite a chameleon," observed one of the King’s colleagues, "and he loves a challenge." He’s traded in his Eddie Bauer clothes for...